New Pac-Man game underway
Energizer Bunny has nothing on insatiable gaming icon.
By Ben Silverman

When Pac-Man first chomped through arcades, Jimmy Carter was in office, the Rams were still in Los Angeles, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was just hitting theaters.

Some three decades later, the legendary mascot will embark on his umpteenth comeback in the form of a brand new Pac-Man game, reports Gamasutra. Coinciding with the game's 30th anniversary, it will be released sometime in 2010.

Pac Man Is Turning 30
The new outing will be his first since the critically-acclaimed Pac-Man: Championship Edition hit Xbox Live in 2007, but it will not be made by original creator Toru Iwatani, who has since moved on to become a full-time lecturer.

Picking up the Pac mantle is Hirokazu Yasuhara, best known as the co-creator of another iconic mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog. The game will be published by Namco Bandai.

"We are in the midst of making Pac-Man come back because his 30th anniversary is in 2010 actually," said Namco Bandai COO Makoto Iwai. "As a group, we feel like we should do something to make him come back. So, there's one project that we started working on, and [Yasuhara is] part of it."

No word yet on what kind of game fans should expect, but we're pretty sure it will feature evil ghosts, delicious pellets, and the reassuring "Wocka Wocka" of its ever-hungry star.

Four Pac-Facts

Pac-Man's original name was Puck Man, but the name was changed when the game was brought to the U.S.

94 percent of American consumers recognize Pac-Man, giving him the highest brand awareness of any video game character in the country.

Though it theoretically doesn't end, a bug in the original game's code makes in unplayable past the 255th level, otherwise known as Pac-Man's "kill screen."

According to Guinness World Records, the first perfect game of Pac-Man was recorded on July 3, 1999 by infamous gamer Billy Mitchell, who was also featured in the critically-acclaimed documentary, The King of Kong. He scored a mind-numbing 3,333,360 in six hours.